Trout Country: Reflections on Rivers, Fly Fishing and Related Addictions

After more than 25 years as Outdoor Editor of the Denver Post, Bob Saile has countless opinions and stories to share on the allure and adventure of trout streams and fly fishing. He serves up a compelling collection, with most of the essays set in the West. This is trout country -- the fish, the flies, the people, and the places.

In his essay "Heavy Hitters, " Saile recalls as a boy reading an article by Joe Brooks about catching a brown trout on southwestern Montana's Big Hole River. For Saile, it was as if he was there. He experienced landing the trout as well as feeling a kinship with the writer. You will get the same feeling reading this lively collection which takes the reader from the South Platte to the Gunnison to the Pacific Northwest and the wilds of Alaska.

"The fight carries out into the main current and the brown jumps, in that wild absolutely reckless way that browns have early in the fight, and I see it is a rather modest-size fish, maybe 13 inches.It looks good, though. Really good.

Moments later, I have its black-and-red spotted side flashing back at me in the glint of water-reflected sunlight, and I extract the fly from the top jaw and slide the fish out of my hand into the flow. The first surface-take trout of the summer is in the books, and this pleases me. The rest will be in the gravy category now. And I know there will be more t come, because the river and the day have that look, that feel." The essays range from describing a bracing morning of ice fishing in Colorado, to the thrill of stalking an Alaskan salmon, to thoughts on fish management and its attendant bureaucracy. In Saile's conversations with other anglers, some well known, some not, but all of whom teach the author something about fishing and himself.

If you care about rivers, trout, salmon, steelhead and fishing in general,this veteran writer and angler makes for a fascinating companion. For Saile,"the core difference between those who don't fish and those of us who do is as simple as this: We who do fish are especially blessed."